Research News

The notion sounds counterintuitive: Encouraging children to forget information can help them learn. But that’s the key takeaway from a recently published paper by UW-Madison’s Haley Vlach. The assistant professor with the Department of Educational Psychology authored an article published in the September issue of Child Development Perspectives titled, “The Spacing Effect in Children's Generalization of Knowledge: Allowing Children Time to Forget Promotes Their Ability to Learn.”

Women and people of color working in higher education continue to bump up against glass ceilings despite years of effort to eradicate discriminatory employment practices, according to a new book edited by UW-Madison’s Jerlando F. L. Jackson. The book, “Measuring Glass Ceiling Effects in Higher Education: Opportunities and Challenges,” reveals the glass ceiling phenomenon to be more complex and harder to solve than previously thought.

A new book for athletic trainers from the Department of Kinesiology's Andrew Winterstein and Sharon Clark is now available. Titled, “The Athletic Trainer’s Guide to Differential Diagnosis: A Visual Learning Approach,” this book is designed to help educators teach students to think critically and to commit to a diagnosis -– which can be one of the most difficult steps for clinicians in training.

Seven leading education research centers, including Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory (Wei LAB) on the UW-Madison campus, issued a report on Tuesday calling on federal policymakers to undertake reforms to address systemic barriers faced by boys and men of color in education. The Wei LAB is directed by Jerlando F.L. Jackson, who is UW-Madison’s Vilas Distinguished Professor of Higher Education.

UW-Madison’s Xueli Wang was awarded $1.4 million from the National Science Foundation to examine what influences are at work when students in Wisconsin transfer from two-year colleges into STEM fields of study at four-year institutions. While the STEM transfer pathway represents a vital opportunity to prepare a diverse future STEM workforce, this opportunity is far from being fully realized. An even larger issue is the lack of a holistic theoretical framework to guide empirical research that specifically targets STEM transfer and its many complexities and nuances.

UW-Madison’s Sara Goldrick-Rab and Nicholas Hillman will be participating in an educational research and policy briefing at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 2. The event is an effort to address recent accountability and financial aid policy proposals in the nation’s capital that could be detrimental to low-income and minority students.

UW-Madison’s Yeseul Choi recently had an article published in the Journal of Student Financial Aid. The article is titled, "Debt and College Students’ Life Transitions: The Effect of Educational Debt on Career Choice in America.” Choi is a doctoral student with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.

An exercise machine that helps stroke victims learn to walk, which was developed by the Department of Kinesiology's Kreg Gruben, was a beneficiary of the first round of awards by UW-Madison's Discovery to Product, or D2P, program, which began operating in March. The 17 grants announced last week will support innovations in many fields of research at the university, from food engineering and medicine to stem cell biology and biomedical engineering.

Self-affirmation writing exercises improved the achievement, especially in mathematics, of students who may suffer from stereotype threat. Geoffrey Borman, who is a professor with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, and colleagues found that writing helps students gain relatively “quick wins.” As these accumulate in a recursive process, like a chain reaction, the gains are carried forward.

From Afghanistan to Zambia, international schools are reconsidering their approach to teaching English language learners, and many are looking to tap into WIDA’s expertise. The 2014 WIDA International Summer Academy, which took place July 14-18 in Madison, was WIDA’s first professional development academy specifically for international schools. The workshop was designed for teachers to learn how WIDA standards and assessments can meet the needs of English language learners (ELLs) in international schools.

UW–Madison’s Wisconsin HOPE Lab has released an evaluation of Single Stop USA’s Community College Initiative. The Implementation Assessment, which was authored by Sara Goldrick-Rab, Katharine Broton, and Victoria M. Frank, is the first in a series of evaluations to fulfill the requirements of a Social Innovation Fund award to Single Stop USA.

A team of researchers from UW-Madison received a $3.5 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Center for Education Research to build upon its promising Project LEAP (Learning through an Early Algebra Progression) initiative over the next four years. Project LEAP is attempting to more deeply examine how the development of children’s algebraic thinking at a younger age may impact their understanding of core algebraic concepts in comparison to students who receive more traditional, arithmetic-based instruction.

UW-Madison’s Department of Educational Psychology is hosting the 79th annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), a professional organization devoted to the advancement of quantitative measurement practices in psychology, education and the social sciences. The 2014 meeting, which kicks off with pre-conference workshops on July 21 and runs through July 25, will be held at The Pyle Center and The Lowell Center on the UW-Madison campus.

What happens to race in public discussions about “race-neutral” college admissions policies? UW-Madison’s Rachelle Winkle-Wagner is the lead author of a an article recently published in the July issue of Educational Policy titled, “When Race Disappears: College Admissions Policy Discourse in the State of Texas.”

The latest edition of Learning Connections, the School of Education’s alumni magazine, is now posted online. The cover stories for this most recent issue include a look at The Network, a new project within the School that’s building collaborations between university researchers and educators in the field, and an article showcasing the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, which is examining some of the most critical issues facing higher education today.

To David Kaplan, Bayesian statistics are enlightening, capable of bringing clarity to difficult problems. But as much as Kaplan, a professor of quantitative methods and chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at UW–Madison, advocates for the increased use of Bayesian methods in quantitative research, he warns that researchers should make their initial forays with caution. A new book by Kaplan is due out in mid-August and it titled, “Bayesian Statistics for the Social Sciences.”

UW-Madison’s Elizabeth Pier won the Best Student Paper Award at the 2014 International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) on Friday in Boulder, Colo. Pier, who is a doctoral student with the Department of Educational Psychology, is the first author of, “Hear What They Say and Watch What They Do: Predicting Valid Mathematical Proofs Using Speech and Gesture.”

The CUNA Mutual Group announced Thursday it is committing $1.2 million to Forward Madison, a collaborative between the UW-Madison School of Education and the Madison Metropolitan School District that was announced in March. Forward Madison strengthens the long-standing relationships between the School of Education and Madison Schools by supporting new educators, providing continued professional learning for educators and improving the diversity of MMSD’s workforce.

UW-Madison’s Mindi Thompson is receiving the 2014 Early Career Professional Award from the Society for Vocational Psychology. She is an assistant professor with the School of Education’s Department of Counseling Psychology. This prestigious award goes to a person who demonstrates a substantial commitment and contribution to the field of career and vocational psychology within seven years of receiving a doctoral degree.